12 January 2011

Mimas Picture Show

At last I have my hands on the February 2010 Mimas encounter data (I am not on the project so I have to wait 12 months to use it . . . ). The encounter produced several mosaics which allow us to produce detailed topographic and color maps of the surface centered on the great 130-km-wide Herschel impact basin. I will be writing a detailed report on this relatively young giant crater later, but in the meantime here are some cool views of the interior of the crater and its surroundings. It is shaped like a big 12-kilometer-deep cereal bowl with a large 5-kilometer-high mound in the middle. One can also see a little bit of icy debris slumped along the base of the inside rim scarp, which rises 2 kilometers above the surrounding plains (1 kilometer = 0.6 miles). (A preliminary profile based on earlier data was presented in my post in February last year.) A note bout the views, my current 3d renderer assumes the terrain is flat and so we don't yet see the curvature of Mimas, which would be very pronounced in a normal view. I'm working on implementing a new renderer soon.

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NOTES ABOUT THE DATA

These brief notes are posted to help viewers understand the nature of the topographic data. Voyager, Galileo and Cassini carried imaging cameras but not altimeters. Topography is instead generated using stereo images or low-Sun images (which can be used to calculate slopes and heights). Neither method is perfect and often, as is the case for Miranda, individual stereo pairs must be constructed and then stitched back together to form a global or partial topographic map. This means that the elevations shown are not precise with respect to the center of the body. Height values derived are accurate however with respect to local features. For example, we know the steep cliff on Miranda is about 10 km high top to base but we do not know how high it is with respect to the mean "sea level" on Miranda. This cannot be determined until we return to these places.I will post additional information on the data over the next few days.

Inquiries for the scientific use of the original digital elevation data should be forwarded to schenk@lpi.usra.edu.